HOLBOROUGH a Hill and a Hollow
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HOLBOROUGH A Hill and a Hollow Holborough is part of the parish of Snodland. In a charter purporting to date from 838 AD it is called Holanbeorge. The old English beorge denotes a hill or mound, especially a burial mound, while Hol correspondingly refers to a hollow. The hill, alas, is no more, having been quarried for its chalk in the fifty years or so from the 1920s to the 1970s. Rather more than 200 feet high and separate from the main range of the North Downs it was attractive to early inhabitants as a special place. At its summit they created a prehistoric ring ditch with a diameter of about 100 feet.1 It is thought that this ditch was perhaps part of the construction of a round barrow, which formerly incorporated a mound or bank. No trace of a burial was found at the centre of the circle, which may originally have been laid directly on to the chalk at ground level and have been dispersed later as the ground was ploughed and re-ploughed. Some bones found in the ditch may be human, suggesting that there was a secondary burial. The uppermost layers of the ditch contained various types of pottery fragments ranging from the Late Bronze Age (around 1000 BC) to Roman times.2 Confirmation that there were people living at Holborough so early came during an archaeological survey by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust in 2004-5, funded by Berkeley Homes prior to housing development, in a cornfield near the main road.3 A major round-house building was identified, and post holes elsewhere showed other circular, square and retangular structures. Some of these were probably for storing grain and evidence suggested the community grew cereals and vegetables. Animal bones showed they also kept livestock. Baked clay loomweights and a bone weaving tool were for making textiles, so sheep must have been present. Beside field boundary ditches, three cremation burials and ten pits containing cremated human bone were sited away from the domestic area and the pits for domestic rubbish. The most exciting find, however, was a group of clay mould fragments for the casting of a Bronze sword manufactured approximately 3000 years ago. An expert at the British Museum has reported that the assemblage represents one of the best-known of its kind and is of 1 See V. I. Evison, ‘An Anglo-Sxon Cemetery t Holborough, Kent’, Archeaologia Cantiana, LXX (1956), 84-141 2 See R. F. Jessup, N. C. Cook and J. M. C. Toynbee, ‘Excavations of a Roman Barrow at Holborough, Snodland’, Archaeological Cantiana, LXVIII (1955), 1-61. 3 Canterbury Archaeologiccal Trust, ‘Holborough Quarry, Snodland. Proposed Residential Development Evaluation (Excavation) centered on TQ 70256235’; ‘Grey Report’: 2004/46: June 2004. 1 national importance.4 The Romans arrived in England in AD 43. One theory is that they crossed the river at Snodland before a great battle with the English near Rochester. They soon settled in the area and many Roman remains have been found in the district. At Snodland a substantial villa was built, perhaps to keep an eye on the river crossing, and other buildings there may have served as a distribution centre for the district. The villa flourished from the second to the fourth centuries. Excavations have been made here periodically for nearly 200 years, but much has been destroyed by later industrial and domestic building and today nothing can be seen above ground. A considerable number of Roman burials have come to light near the villa, but a second barrow was created by the Romans on the hill at Holborough. Presumably this was a prestigious burial demanding special treatment. The site chosen was close to the prehistoric ring-barrow. In August 1844 the archaeologist Thomas Wright spent four days digging a trench through the tumulus, but found relatively little.5 When excavated in 1954 the barrow revealed that the body of a man, probably about 40 years old - possibly an important official of Rochester – had been carried here. A funeral pyre was set up just to the south of the burial site and he was cremated, possibly sitting on a bronze-mounted folding stool with a metal-fringed cushion, which was later buried in the barrow. Some glass vessels were also put in the fire and these fused in the great heat. Also placed on the pyre was an old coin, appropriately showing a cremation on its reverse side. A grave was dug and a temporary wooden hut was built over the spot, perhaps to afford shelter during the funeral ceremony. This included the ritual smashing of a group of five jars (amphorae). The man's ashes were placed in a wooden coffin together with some of the chalk which had been removed to make the grave itself. A libation of wine or oil was offered and a feast (which included a fowl) was held. Later the remains were collected and buried, mostly in special pits. A dome of chalk and turf was erected above the grave and a larger mound covered the whole, rising to 11 feet above the original surface. The barrow was surrounded by an oval ditch and bank. The pottery remains suggest that all this occurred in the first quarter of the third century A.D. Before long, however, the mound was partially re-opened at its southern extremity to receive the burial of a small child, aged about one, in a fine lead sarcophagus (now in Maidstone Museum). Presumably this was a relative - perhaps a child or grandchild - of the man for whom the barrow was made. Within the sarcophagus with the body, which had not been cremated, was the remains of a purse - a luxury item suggesting the child had come from a wealthy family. This sarcophagus has been described as the most interesting found at any Romano-British site, because of its decoration of scallop shells and Dionysiac figures, which were symbolic representations of the after-life in Roman Mediterranean art. It seems likely that the maker was relatively local, but used a 'pattern-book' imported from abroad for 4 See Canterbury Archaeological Trust Annual Report, 2004-5, 41-42. 5 T. Wright, ‘Wanderings of an Antiquary: VII: The Valley of Maidstone, Kit’s Coty and the Cromlechs around’, from The Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1852, 564-571, reprinted as SHS Pamphlet No. 1, 1997. 2 the design. The use of such figures was widespread in Roman times and does not necessarily imply that the Snodland family was especially devoted to the worship of Dionysius. No doubt this was the same burial noted by William Lambarde, in the second edition of his Perambulation of Kent (1596), where he writes: 'As touching that Holboroe (or rather Holanbergh) it lieth in Snodland...and tooke the name of Beorgh, or the Hill of buriall, standing over it; in throwing downe a part whereof (for the use of the chalke) my late Neighbour, Maister Tylghman discovered in the very Centre thereof, Urnam cineribus plenam, an earthen pot filled with ashes, an assured token of a Romane Monument...' The prehistoric ring ditch was at the summit of the hill. The Roman tumulus was in the clump of trees on the right. A Saxon cemetery was between the two barrows. Roman rule declined in the area after the third or fourth centuries, and it is quite possible that cultivated areas then became overgrown. Yet the river crossing would continue to bring people to Holborough and Snodland, so there was always a likelihood that some would take up residence, however temporary, close by. In 1952, continued chalk quarrying revealed a cemetery of 39 graves between the prehistoric and Roman barrows. Others had already been lost to the diggers, but a full investigation of those remaining was carried out.6 Apart from one infant grave, all were lying with the head to the west. As occurs in other locations, it seems likely that the Bronze Age barrow was deliberately chosen as the site for these burials. The cemetery gradually spread from the first graves, dug into the prehistoric barrow, north and east down the slope. Some burials were in lidless wooden coffins and some had grave goods buried with them: buckles, shields, spears, swords, knives, bowls and other utensils, and pottery. It has been suggested that some of the finds, especially two buckles, indicate a Christian connection for these people. One buckle has a cross similar to known Christian forms of the time, the other has a bird motif which compares with another from Faversham with a fish - also a Christian symbol. In 604 Justus had been ordained as the first Bishop of Rochester by Augustine and a small church dedicated to St. Andrew was built in the city - later enlarged to become the cathedral - so Christianity was already established in the area. The cemetery was begun in the seventh century and continued into the next, to serve a group of settlers living at Holborough. It cannot have continued for too long, judging by its relatively small extent. The finds can all be dated to a span of some fifty years, but the later burials had no grave-goods in them. So the hill was a place for the dead, where the barrows were sited beside an ancient 6 See Vera I. Evison, ‘An Anglos-Saxon Cemetery at Holborough Kent’, Archaeologica Cantiana LXX (1956), 84-141. 3 trackway. This had run along the foot of the escarpment at the spring-line, through Trottiscliffe and Paddlesworth, but it deviated here to run down to the river, crossing at Holborough to run south-east past the numerous megalithic monuments towards Boxley.